Cookbook #64: Römertopf Cooking is Fun. Wendy Philipson, Eduard Bay, Ransbach, 1971.

I picked this book out of the stack of paperback cookbooks totally thinking it would be out of date and nearly useless. But no, it made me smile, and that in itself has value.

My sister gave me a Römertopf cooker back in the 70s. I did use it a few times, but I’m not sure if I ever used this particular cookbook or even how I got this cookbook. It is not marked with food stains or notes.

And now my big admission of guilt: I broke my Römertopf after I’d had it a couple years. I forget exactly how I broke it, whether it was temperature-shock or a physical drop. My husband glued it back together, but I never felt safe using it for cooking again. So it sat accusingly on the soffit in the kitchen for years and years. I finally tossed it during a kitchen cleaning some time back.

What is a Römertopf cooker? It’s a covered clay pot, one of several brands available. You use it, pre-soaked in water, in a hot oven, for braising meats, cooking fish and soups, and even desserts. Supposedly, it cooks especially well because the soaked pot releases steam as the food bakes and all the natural (and healthy) juices are kept in the finished meal.

Let’s compare clay pots to other braising methods. A slow cooker (crock pot) can be left all day, unattended, which is great. Drawbacks: you need to use a separate pan if you want to start with browned meats, and sometimes a crock pot overcooks everything. Any stove top covered pan is useful for braising, but it needs to be monitored. Covered, stove-top-to-oven cookware like Le Creusets allow you to brown meats directly in the pot, then you can leave then unattended in the oven for several hours. Le Creusets are especially heavy and sturdy. (You can drop them!)

Now we come to clay pots. Clay pots require a soaking in water before use. You cannot set them on a hot stove top to pre-brown meats. You cannot add cold liquids during the cooking process or the pot will break. They are fragile, sensitive both to temperature and physical shock. They are difficult to get clean. (Le Creusets are really easy to clean.)

So why use a clay cooker? This cookbook and even today’s online resources claim that a clay cooker imparts excellent flavor and tenderness to a meal, require no added fat, and keep in all the nutrients. So I will give mine a try.

Oh – yes, I do again have a clay pot cooker – so I am able to cook a meal from this cookbook. I got it for baking no-knead bread loaves. It is a different brand: Schlemmer Topf. The inside of the bottom section is glazed, I think for easier cleaning. Anyway, it’s a clay pot, and I’ll cook something in it for this blog.

A little bit about this cookbook
skip to the recipe if this bores you!

This book is the English adaptation of the original German “Braten und Schmoren im Römertopf”. Wendy Philipson completely reworked and extended the German version. She is from England, and spent time in Germany teaching English at the University of Munich.

Clay pot cooking dates back thousands of years, to the Romans and even before to “our most primitive ancestors, who lived from the fruits of the hunt, cooked the meat of the animals they had killed in simple clay containers placed in the glowing embers of their fires.” Why cook in a clay pot today? Wendy gives several reasons. For one, very little liquid needs to be added, so the natural juices and the full “flavour” and taste and vitamins are retained. “The aroma and taste of food prepared in this way is rich and nutritious.” Secondly, no fat needs to be added to a dish, great for those on a diet for slimming or health reasons. “This has been officially verified by the Institute of Domestic Science in Munich – and the Bay-Römertopf is the only casserole of its kind which has been subjected to these tests.” Third, “cooking in a Römertopf is really child’s play. ‘Overdone’ and ‘burnt’ are words which are completely unknown in the Römertopf kitchen. Once a dish is in the oven nothing can go wrong.”

Finally. the Romertopf is “attractive as well as useful. Nowadays, with modern technical developments, not only in outer space but also in the kitchen, the housewife is grateful for every technical improvement – from the high-speed pressure cooker to the fully automatic oven. Yet sometimes we think wistfully that with all this progress the cosiness of the old-fashioned kitchen is being lost. The Römertopf – much to our delight – combines the best of both worlds.”

(Note the publication date: 1971. Crock pot cookery came to the American kitchen in the early 70s, as per my research for my first slow-cooker cookbook blog post.)

Clay pot basics: Soak the clay pot and the lid for at least 10 minutes before use, put into a cold oven and then heat the oven slowly; never add cold liquids during the cooking process; uncover during the last 10 minutes or so to brown the meat; take out of the oven and set on a folded towel to prevent temperature shock. Clean in hot water with a brush, do not use harsh cleaners, and learn to accept that you will not get it looking sparkly clean.

Basically, in my opinion, using a clay baker will kind of a pain. But, will using the clay pot be worth the trouble? Will it taste fantastic? Will I regain the cosiness of an old-fashioned kitchen?

The recipe

I chose to cook “Roman Pot Beef”. Like many of the entries in this cookbook, the recipe is just sketched out. The majority of recipes are for meats (beef, veal, pork, mutton and lamb, game, and poultry). Fish and soups are also included. Desserts are given a few pages, with the caution “not for slimmers!”. (As I said, this book makes me smile.)

I checked online, and the current Römertopf website has content quite similar to my 1971 Römertopf Cooking is Fun cookbook. (It’s written in English, with a heavy German accent.) The recipe for “Braised Joint of Beef” reads a lot like the “Roman Pot Beef“ recipe in my cookbook:

A “joint” of beef is a roast. I chose a cross-rib chuck roast. Mixed vegetables, 2-3? I think carrots for sure, then maybe leeks and parsnips. Potatoes would work, but I suggest adding them about an hour before the dish is done, or they will be cooked to death. I like the Hungarian national variation: sour cream, anchovies, garlic, capers, and a bit of lemon. And the red wine from the general suggestion. So here goes!

Römertopf Pot Roast (“Roman Pot Beef”)
serves 4-6

• cross-rib roast, 2-3 pounds
• 1 onion, chopped roughly
• carrots, leeks, parsnips, potatoes, red bell pepper, about 3/4 cup each, roughly chopped
• fresh herbs (parsley, thyme, oregano) or dried, to your own taste (or use 1 tablespoon dried Italian seasoning herbs)
• potatoes (optional)
• 1 tablespoon sour cream
• 2 anchovies, chopped
• 1 tablespoon lemon rind
• 1 tablespoon capers
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• salt and pepper
• about 1/2 cup red wine

Soak both the top and bottom of a clay baker in water for at least 10 minutes. Leave your oven off.

Take the clay baker out of the water and towel off. Put the roast in it, then the onion and other vegetables, the herbs, capers, anchovies, lemon rind, garlic, and salt and pepper. Smear the sour cream on top of the roast. Pour a little wine over the mixture. Cover the pot.

Place the clay baker in a cool oven (adjust the oven rack to a low position). Turn the oven to 400˚. Let cook for 2 1/2 hours. You can peek at it during the cooking time to make sure it isn’t drying out and browning, but it does work. And, you can’t add cold liquid anyway, as it might break the pot. You can add quartered potatoes during the last hour of cooking.

Note: CAREFULLY open the clay baker to check the contents. Do not put your face directly over it and pull off the lid. I learned the hard way! It is very hot and steamy! Using a pot holder, lift the lid so that it vents away from you.

At the end of the cooking time, remove the pot from the oven and carefully remove the lid. Take the roast out of the pot, set it on a plate, and cover it with foil. If you wish, use a slotted spoon to remove the (overcooked) vegetables to serve with the roast and then pour the meat juices into a pan to make a gravy. What I did was pour the entire vegetable-meat juice mixture into a food processor, then pulsed until it was fairly smooth. I put that mixture into a pan, added beef stock and about a tablespoon of corn starch, and heated it all until it was thick. It was wonderful!

Comments

This “pot beef” was very, very good, as cooked per my version above. It’s hard to tell whether or not it was better than my usual version of a pot roast (a recipe from Cooks Illustrated). In some ways, the preparation was easier, since I did not have to brown the meat first. In some ways, it was harder, since handling the hot, almost fragile clay pot is tricky. But I do like the connection with the past of cooking in a clay pot. Last June, we traveled to Turkey, and learned a lot about ancient civilizations, including the Romans. So, I’ll probably use the clay pot again for a stew or such. It was fun.

My clay pot began this current adventure sort of dirty. Just saying. It’s hard to get clay pots clean. Before this pot beef, I had only used it for baking bread.

Here are the ingredients that I used. You really can use just about whatever you like. There are onions, carrots, parsnips, red bell peppers, garlic, anchovies, capers, and lemon rind in the bowl.

After cooking, the vegetables are kind of overdone. The cookbook claims that the cooked mixtures are a good presentation “as is”. I disagree. Plus, look at all the browned stuff on the sides that will be hard to clean off.

The meat itself is nicely browned and very tender. As I wrote above, I made a gravy from the meat juices and food-processed vegetables. When the pot had cooled a bit, I used some beef stock to rinse some of the nice browned stuff into the gravy mixture. I served it over big flat noodles and it was excellent. Good flavor, tender meat.

Clean-up time. I soaked the pot in soapy water for an hour or so, and to my surprise, it cleaned up nicely. So no complaints from me.

Cookbook #60: The Wine Diet Cookbook. Dr. Salvatore P. Lucia and Emily Chase, M.S., The Piper Company, NY, NY (Abelard-Schuman also listed), 1974, Bantam Edition, 1976.

I bought this book back in the 70s. I love wine and I have to watch calories, so I thought: a wine diet, perfect! Sort of tongue in cheek though, since I know from experience that wine sometimes ruins my personal dieting strategy.

I believe in keeping small amounts of your choice foods in a diet, especially if your diet is long term. Too much denial will derail any healthy eating plan. So for me, wine and chocolate are included – but in moderation. And wine (like chocolate) is good for you. According to the authors of this book: “Wine is a food; a source of energy for work and body maintenance.”

A brief outline of the wine diet is on page 10:

“The Magic Number: 1200. The total daily calorie budget for these menus is approximately 1200, including a 4-ounce glass of table wine with dinner each night. . . . We have selected a 1200-calorie program because at this calorie level it is possible to include the basic elements needed for good nutrition and still give the slimmer a chance to average as much as a two-pound loss per week.”

I agree with the 1200 calories per day for dieting, and that was my goal when I used to (obsessively) count calories. But my 1200 total was without wine, and I was never able to give up a treat of fruit in the afternoon for a glass of wine at dinner.

The authors state that “a glass of table wine brings relaxation and satisfaction that adds greatly to the slimmer’s enjoyment of the meal”. “Wine is a stimulating and a most salutary nutritional element.” “Very little will power will be needed to diminish the volume of a meal.” That may work for some people, but not always for me. Instead, one glass can tempt me to have another glass, and too much wine decreases my will power to stop eating.

This book might work for someone besides me. The diet plan is sensible, including a good balance of carbohydrates, protein, and fruits and vegetables. Diet margarine and low-fat milk products are employed to shave calories, and all recipes are explicit in portion amounts and calories. Daily menu plans are outlined. Wine is used in many of the recipes, adding flavor without adding calories.

Not many of the recipes in this book beg me to be tried. I appreciate the reminder to use more wine in cooking to boost flavor, but today I find no other benefits in this 50 year old cookbook. I will recycle the The Wine Diet Cookbook.

Before recycling: for this blog, I will cook “Dilly Beef Rolls”.

Kind of a cute idea, rolling round steak around a dill pickle. I will use the dill pickles I made last summer. I will skip the “2 tablespoons diet margarine” and use a few drops of olive oil instead. For the “1 teaspoons beef stock base” and “1/2 cup hot water”, I will substitute my own beef stock. I buy tomato paste in a tube, so that’s easy. I see no need for instant-blending flour; it’s almost as easy to use regular flour mixed with a little water. California Red Table Wine? No, I won’t leave that out! Not sure the bottle in the refrigerator is Californian, but it’s red. And I have sherry too. Okay, this should be fun. I get to get out my ancient meat mallet too, that’s always fun.

Let’s see if this recipe can turn a usually tough and bland round steak into a flavorful, low-fat meal. My version of the recipe follows.

Dilly Beef Rolls
serves 2-3

• 9-12 ounces round steak – buy the “thin cut” if possible
• 1 large whole dill pickle, quartered lengthwise
• 1/2 of a medium onion, chopped
• 1 clove garlic, chopped
• 1/4 pound sliced mushrooms
• 1/2-3/4 cup beef stock
• scant 1/2 cup red wine
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste
• thyme, about 1/2 teaspoon (I used fresh thyme)
• marjoram, about 1/2 teaspoon (I used dried)
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 tablespoon flour
• 1 tablespoon dry sherry
• fresh chopped parsley to taste

Cut the round steak into 2 or 3 equal pieces, then pound with a mallet to 1/4-inch thickness. Roll each piece around a pickle quarter, and tie the center with string.

Heat a (coverable) cooking pot until it feels hot when you hold your hand an inch above it. Add a small amount of olive oil and tilt the pan to spread the oil. Lower the heat to medium, then add the round steak rolls and brown them on all sides. Remove them from the pan and set them aside on a plate.

Add a few more drops of oil to the pan. Add the onions and sweat them with a little salt, cooking until they are soft. Add the garlic and mushrooms; cook and stir until the mushrooms are wet and soft. Add the broth, wine, tomato paste, thyme, and marjoram; stir. Add the beef rolls and any of the pan juices that have collected on the plate.

Cover the pot and lower the heat to maintain a very gentle simmer. Cook for at least an hour and a half, until the meat is nice and tender.

Remove the beef rolls and cut the strings off. Set them aside while you finish the sauce.

To the sauce in the pot, add the 1 tablespoon flour mixed into a little broth (or water) to a smooth paste. Stir until mixed in well; add more broth (or water) if the sauce looks too thick. Add the sherry and chopped parsley. Heat the sauce to a simmer, then add the beef rolls back in and heat it all up. At this point, you can let your dinner “hold” until you are ready to serve.

Serve these dilly beef rolls with any starch, such as mashed potatoes, rice, or pasta.

Comments

I was lucky to find very thin round steak. In the photo below, I have already pounded one of the slices with my ancient mallet.

The focus in the photo below is on my dill pickles. Yes, I canned them myself last summer! They are gorgeous, aren’t they?

I found that these rolls hold together fine with just one piece of string in the middle. Beef rolls formed around a crumbly stuffing are a lot harder to manage. Note my container of homemade beef stock. (I should talk about how I make and store it sometime.)I browned the beef rolls in my heavy cast iron pot. Lately I’ve been using my LeCreusets a lot, but this old pot with its heavy lid works really well for stove-top braising. Below is the mixture of beef and vegetables and seasonings before the long simmer.

The mixture after cooking looks just a little different, but the meat has changed in character from tough to soft. It smells really good, too.

Plated:

Note the glass of wine! On a weeknight! Just had to go with the advice of The Wine Diet Cookbook. It’s a small glass, a measured 4 ounces, not very much.

These beef rolls taste really good. I’ll make them again! The dill pickle inside gave them the flavor of a sauerbrauten. The gravy, while low in fat, was very flavorful! And I even forgot the parsley. I did put a little chopped fresh oregano on the green beans, though.

Note the pasta – it is homemade. Last week I got out my old pasta machine and made a big batch of these large macaroni noodles (and froze them in portions). That pasta machine will surely be the focus of a future blog post. The bread is homemade too, a result of my recent acquisition of a new sourdough starter. All is yummy.

Cookbook #34: Quick and Easy Recipes. California Home Economics Teachers, California Cookbook Company, Orange, California, 1986.

This spiral-bound book is a collection of recipes contributed by home economic teachers in California in the 1980s. It’s a notched-up version of a “community” cookbook, as it is professionally published (it has an ISBN) and has good color photos contributed by several food companies.

My sister sent me this cookbook for Christmas in 1986. She was a teacher in the California school system and that’s probably how she came across this book. She notes three recipes – layered spinach salad, orange bread, and spinach dip – as being really good. Layered spinach salad was a classic back then, a great dish for bringing to a party. You make it the day before so the flavors can meld. This version has spinach, bacon, frozen peas, Romano cheese, fresh mushrooms, red onions, mayonnaise and sour cream. I have made and liked the orange bread (you blend a whole orange!) and the spinach dip, served with fresh vegetables, could be made low-cal by using Greek yogurt.

Like the spinach salad, the recipes in this book are a very good reflection of American family cooking in the 1980s. Classic recipes include artichoke dip, clam dip, cheese rolls, molded salads, tuna casseroles, hamburger stroganoff, and chicken rice casserole. The recipes are not always from scratch, but they are still home-cooked. Examples of typical 80s ingredients are Bisquick, frozen dinner rolls, crescent rolls, packaged pudding, canned soups, cake mixes, dried onion soup mix, tater tots, canned tuna, canned clams, and canned French fried onions. These ingredients may not be the best for us, but they aren’t terrible and they bring both ease of cooking and (to me) a sense of comfort food. And on the healthier side, many of this book’s recipes do include only non-packaged and fresh ingredients, and several recipes are labeled “low-fat”.

I will go back to this cookbook for some of the classics I remember from that time. If I ever want to make artichoke dip or layered salad, now I know where to find a recipe without going online. Plus the cookbook has a note from my sister, so I definitely will keep it!

But what to cook for this blog? As usual, I’m looking for something low-fat that uses ingredients I have on hand, and that will add to my cooking repertoire. This cookbook has a chapter titled “Stir Fry Cookery”; sounds right up my alley. I chose to try the “Shredded Beef with Green Peppers” because (1) I have a flank steak in the freezer and (2) flank steaks are a lean meat and (3) I like the tablespoon of fresh ginger it includes and (4) it calls for very thin slicing and then marinating of the flank steak before cooking. I’m usually pretty impatient when preparing meat for stir fries, tending to cut it into large slices. That works for chicken or pork tenderloin, but not for beef (too tough). I think the very thin slicing – shredding – will get me out of my usual rut.

I plan to modify the recipe (surprise!). My dining partner doesn’t like green peppers, so I’ll tone them down and add some other vegetables that I have on hand.

Looking carefully at the above recipe, I see a mistake: It calls for 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil in the marinade and 1/2 cup for cooking. But in the directions, it says to put 5 tablespoons of oil in the wok, and never says what to do with the other 3 tablespoons. And half a cup of oil is way too much oil anyway – that’s almost 1000 calories!

Another issue: it has way too little meat, at least for our tastes. Two-thirds of a pound of meat is about 10 ounces; I use about 9 ounces for 2 people, and this recipe claims to feed 4.

I don’t like sesame oil very much, and I think it needs soy sauce, so in my version I will put 1 tablespoon soy sauce in the marinade and then taste to decide if it needs more after it cooks. I’ll also up the vinegar (and use rice wine vinegar, not “rice wine”). Why baking soda? That’s a strange ingredient for a stir fry; I’ll leave it out. I also think it needs thickening, so I’ll add a touch of cornstarch.

Guess I pretty much mangled the original recipe, even before I started! And then I began cooking … oooh, more changes are needed. I got the wok nice and hot with a little oil in it, then added the finely shredded beef. No way was it done cooking in 10 seconds. After about 30 seconds there were still a lot of raw pieces of meat, but then the meat released a bunch of juice into the pan. I probably cooked the meat 5 minutes before it was all cooked, and then I had quite a bit of juices in the pan. The juices are sure to add to the flavor – I decided to take it off the heat and keep the juices. (Maybe it would have been done in 10 seconds if I had used 5 tablespoons of oil, but heck, it would have splattered all over the place.)

Whew, lots of changes. The recipe below is how I actually cooked this dish.

Shredded Beef with Vegetables
serves about 2 people

I served this over rice.

Steak and marinade:

•  9 ounces flank steak, sliced across the grain, at an angle, as thinly as you can – you want it “shredded”
• 1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• sesame seed oil to taste (I used a few drops)

Vegetables:

• 1 tablespoon freshly grated ginger root
• a mixture of thinly sliced vegetables, such as green peppers, green onions, carrots, baby bok choy, cabbage, mushrooms, and/or celery
• 1/4 teaspoon sugar
• soy sauce to taste: I used about 2 tablespoons reduced-sodium soy sauce

Combine the sliced beef with the marinade ingredients and let stand about 15 minutes. While it marinades, prepare your vegetables. I used shitake mushrooms, baby bok choy, carrots, green peppers, and green onions. Aim for about the same amount of total sliced vegetables as you have sliced beef.

Heat a tablespoon or two of vegetable oil in a wok (or any fry pan) over high heat for 1 minute. Add the beef and stir fry until all the meat looks cooked but not so long that the juices that come out of the meat evaporate away. Remove the cooked beef (and its juices) from the wok and put in a bowl.

Return the wok to medium high heat. You can add a few drops of oil, if you wish. Add the vegetables (don’t forget the ginger) and stir fry for 2-3 minutes. Add the cooked beef and its juices back to the pan. Add:

• 1 teaspoon cornstarch dissolved in a couple tablespoons water
• soy sauce to taste (1-2 tablespoons)

Heat through and serve over rice.

I sharpened my knife and took some time to “shred” the beef. The pile of sliced beef is about 9 ounces; the rest went back into the freezer for another meal.

Above are the sliced vegetables (and a hunk of ginger root) that I used in the dish.

And above is the cooked dish. We liked it a lot! Some red peppers might have been nice for color. It had just enough sauce to serve over rice. Taking the time to carefully shred the flank steak before cooking is really worth the while.

I now have a new stir fry recipe in my repertoire! Hmm, this would be good with hoisin sauce in a flour tortilla. Moo shoo beef. Stay creative!

Cookbook #16: Eating Light. Better Homes and Gardens, Meredith Corporation, Des Moines, Iowa, 1985.

This is another low-calorie cookbook that I picked up in the 1980s. I remember that I frequently bought the “women’s magazines” like Better Homes and Gardens during that time, so it doesn’t surprise me that I purchased a book with the same name.

This cookbook is similar to the magazine: glossy, and produced by a company rather than an individual. The recipes have long names and pretty pictures, but not many tempt me to try them. Years ago, I probably picked up some ideas on low-calorie cooking from this book, but today, I find it “old hat”. Not very interesting. Also, they put the nutrition information in the appendix, rather than with each recipe, which I find inconvenient.

I decided to try “Pork Pinwheels with Apricot Stuffing”. I like pork tenderloin, and I like apricots. It’s a new idea (to me) to use dried apricots in a stuffing for pork. And I think the pinwheels might look pretty, and hopefully I’ll be able to add another pork tenderloin recipe to my repertoire.

There is only one other recipe in this book that looks interesting, so I’ll copy that recipe and give this cookbook away.

Comments

These turned out pretty good, at least when I made some changes. I’ll type in the recipe below. But first I’ll rant, with a what’s wrong with this recipe discussion.

This recipe makes “6 servings”. Those are dang small servings. Each person would only get about 2 1/2 ounces of pork. Generally a serving of pork is 4 ounces. For the two of us, I weigh out 9-10 ounces of pork for a meal. (The nutrition information on the package of pork tenderloin that I bought states that 4 ounces has 130 calories and 23 grams of protein!)

The nutrition information (at the back of the book) states “191 calories” per serving. Using the information on the packaging of the ingredients, I come up with more like 160 calories per 1/6 of the recipe. And note that I don’t use too many significant figures: it’s silly to say “191 calories” when there so many variables when one actually prepares the recipe. Bread, for instance, has a quite variable calorie content. (I used My Daily Bread so I know exactly how many calories it has.)

The recipe slips in unnecessary calories by employing both butter and apricot nectar. Butter has 100 calories per tablespoon (Nutrient Facts) and can be eliminated by using a non-stick pan (and a tiny amount of olive oil) to wilt the onion and celery. Surprisingly, a can of apricot nectar has 200 calories. And it contains “high fructose corn syrup, apricot juice concentrate, apple juice concentrate”. If/when I make this again, I’ll try to find a better juice choice at Whole Foods.

The recipe calls for “1 pound” of pork tenderloin. Ground meat might be sold in exact 1 pound packages, but the same is not true for pork tenderloin. The one I used weighed 14 3/4 ounces. I went ahead and used it (even though I aim at 9-10 ounces) because to roll up the meat, a certain mass is required. I had leftovers, but the dogs didn’t mind. Be aware, though, that this recipe does not scale down well to only two people.

Broiling is called for in this recipe. But, it does not state whether to set the broiler to high or low. I tried 5 inches from the broiler and the low setting; the pinwheels were burning within 2 minutes. Luckily I checked! I don’t know what kind of broiler they used but mine simply did not work. I changed my oven to “bake”, as reflected in my typed recipe below. I don’t think that using a broiler rack is necessary. The book states that broiling with a rack is a great method because it allows the fat to drip off; my opinion is that pork tenderloin has very little fat in it to drip off. I’d skip it next time.

All that said, the meal was a success. The pinwheels were pretty and the cinnamon was a nice addition. If you want to try these, use my recipe below.

Pork Pinwheels with Apricot Stuffing

With one pound of pork tenderloin, this would serve about 3 people. Adjust the amounts of all ingredients according to the number of people you are feeding and the weight of the purchased pork tenderloin.

• 1 pound pork tenderloin
• 2/3 cup chicken broth
• 1/3 cup finely chopped dried apricots
• 2 tablespoons chopped onion
• 2 tablespoons chopped celery
• 1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
• salt and pepper to taste
• 2 cups dry whole wheat bread cubes (about 1/4-inch cubes)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch
• dash nutmeg
• 1 cup apricot nectar (try to find one that does not have high fructose corn syrup; perhaps you can find fresh apricot juice)

Heat the broth to almost boiling. Pour it over the apricots and let stand for at least 5 minutes while you prepare the vegetables.

Cook the onion and celery in a tiny amount of olive oil in a non-stick pan until the onion wilts; salt to taste and to sweat the onion. Add the cinnamon and pepper, then add this and the apricot mixture to the bread cubes.

Split the tenderloin lengthwise, cutting to, but not through, the opposite side. Open it out and pound it lightly with a meat mallet until it is about 10 inches by 6 inches. Spread the stuffing evenly over the tenderloin. Roll up jelly-roll style, starting from one of the short (6-inch) sides.

Secure the meat roll with toothpicks or tie with string at 1-inch intervals. Then, cut the meat roll into six 1-inch slices.

Carefully place the meat slices in a lightly greased or Pam-sprayed baking pan. [“Cut side down”? For four of the slices, both sides are cut. Another recipe-rant.]

Baking: I suggest a quick broil on low for a minute or two to brown the tops of the pinwheels. Then, bake these at 400˚ for about 20 minutes. Check with an instant-read thermometer; about 150˚ internal temperature is good. I served these with sides of double-stuffed potatoes and vegetables.

Below is a photo of the pork roll. It’s so bulbous! Toothpicks might work better, since the string kind of squished it and left a mark on the pinwheels after they were cooked.

Here it is after I cut two pinwheels. I only cut five in all because I started with a little less than a pound of tenderloin.

The pinwheels, cooked and plated:

Pretty good!